How to play a dredge deck

[HornofAmmon]

Hey all, just wondering if you can give a newb some advice on how to *play* a dredge deck. I copied what aww1979 posted in his tutorials, shown below, and I feel like I need an instruction manual.

1) What should I be discarding when I use Bazaar? Bridge from Below is obvious, but what's the priority for everything else?
2) Should I be dredging every turn to return Golgari Thug, Grave-Troll, etc. to my hand?
3) How do I avoid decking myself from the dredging?
4) Would adding some threshold cards and mana be a smart modification, or would it break the dredge engine too much?

Thanks for any advice!

.398 4 Bazaar of Baghdad
.684 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
.678 4 Golgari Thug
.680 4 Stinkweed Imp
.681 4 Narcomoeba
.705 4 Bridge From Below
.700 4 Dread Return*
.666 4 Cabal Therapy
.1531 1 Angel of Despair
.675 4 Flame-Kin Zealot
.691 4 Ichorid
.682 4 Unmask
.449 4 Contagion
.1851 4 Pact of Negation
.120 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
.576 2 Petrified Field
.1913 4 Dryad Arbor

[stassy]

Here is a full tutorial of a dredge play by aww1979 :

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2205&p=28125&hilit=dredge#p28125

[HornofAmmon]

Here is a full tutorial of a dredge play by aww1979 :

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=2205&p=28125&hilit=dredge#p28125

Doh, I don't know how I missed that one, I got his deck from his general tutorial thread and didn't see this one. Thanks.

[aww1979]

1) Depends slightly on what you're facing, but I'd recommend making sure you have your two biggest dredge cards in the graveyard so that you can bazaar them every turn. (usually 2x trolls but sometimes something else if you haven't gotten them yet) Then your flashback cards and at least one flamekin zealot. After that it doesn't really matter.
2) 99% of the time you should be dredging everything you can. The other 1% would be whatever very strange situations you might find yourself in that can't really be predicted.
3) I've never had it happen :p But if it does, just stop dredging and using bazaars once you only have a few cards left, and just draw 1 card a turn normally.
4) I can't think of any coded threshold cards I'd use. One thing I *would* strongly recommend, that I found out presumably after I made that list, is that 4x Nether Shadow is gold in this deck. I'd swap them for the Pact of Negation, which I've tried in dredge, but I don't think I have ever cast one.

[HornofAmmon]

1) Depends slightly on what you're facing, but I'd recommend making sure you have your two biggest dredge cards in the graveyard so that you can bazaar them every turn. (usually 2x trolls but sometimes something else if you haven't gotten them yet) Then your flashback cards and at least one flamekin zealot. After that it doesn't really matter.
2) 99% of the time you should be dredging everything you can. The other 1% would be whatever very strange situations you might find yourself in that can't really be predicted.
3) I've never had it happen :p But if it does, just stop dredging and using bazaars once you only have a few cards left, and just draw 1 card a turn normally.
4) I can't think of any coded threshold cards I'd use. One thing I *would* strongly recommend, that I found out presumably after I made that list, is that 4x Nether Shadow is gold in this deck. I'd swap them for the Pact of Negation, which I've tried in dredge, but I don't think I have ever cast one.

Thank you for the advice. I've just had two amusing losses playing in a gauntlet, one from a Tabernacle (conceded, since clicking "don't pay upkeep" for every 30+ creatures and zombies wasn't worth my time) and one from Howling Mines (did get decked!).

I did take a look at your amusing screenshots from the tutorials, and they helped somewhat, though I still suck at playing your deck.

So is the goal: get the following in play - Nether Fiend, Ichorid, Narcomoeba, zombies from the former dying - and possibly Dread Return a Flame-Kin Zealot? Whenever possible, use my Bazaar, dredge up the dredge guys, and then discard them immediately?

Sadly, I haven't even used a Dread Return yet - do you click on the Rules Engine to activate it?

This deck seems like it'd be easier to play in person than with Manalink, since the interface kills me.

Thanks!

[aww1979]

Yeah, the idea is to make a bunch of zombies with Bridge from Below. Put the Nether Fiends and Narcomoebas into play whenever you can. Once you have a few bridges in the graveyard, bring back all your ichorids too and then use Dread Return on a Flame-Kin Zealot. This will make a bunch of zombies which will have +1/+1 and haste, and (usually) be enough to kill the AI in one attack.

And yes, to use any flashback cards, such as dread return or cabal therapy in this deck, you click on the rules engine, and a menu with all of the possible choices will come up.

Also, yeah it would definitely be easier to play in person. I don't even play it in manalink anymore because it's so slow and often locks up my computer. I haven't tried it with the newer updates, which are supposed to help with that, so it might be faster now.

[t0xica]

i play dredge in legacy, and its just a little different from aww version since we dont have the baazars, for legacy the basic idea, is to have dredger+discardengine+mana, in hand to start going, and drawing engine would be optimal, is rare to keep hand without a dredger, as for the t1 version.
since the baazar is so powerfull, i think the deck is pretty automatic, mulligan till baazars, no matter if u had a dredger or not, u will be drawing 3 cards per turn, sooner or later u will put something in the graveyard. and dredge dredge dredge

so

baazar draw discard, always dredge if able
2 bridges from below on graveyard means that if u dread return u will get, 6 zombies and the extra critter, wich best choice prolly is the flamekin zealot since 6 zombies 3/3 plus the zealot hits for 21 life, and prolly is game over

i found that at least in this game at least, cards like iona/woodfall primu/angel of despair, are no needed. at least i never got to use them.

adding more mana to the t1 build is a bad idea, the deck work awesome without it, and treshold cards like what? remeber that with dredge, usually the only cards u will be able to play are the ones in your initial hand, after those, all the remainging cards go to graveyard.

this is my build, is similar to the legacy one, that i was used
here u run 12 lands, and 8 drwaing engines,

if u think about the deck just for challenge/game use and not maybe for real life testing i will reccomend u to take out the unmask they are useless in the game, and in awww version the pact of negation is no needed too, same with the contagions, also i would take out iona and the primus :O, there is a deck that play worship, but i think maybe u can use the slot for something else

i like the LED+eternal witness+ firestorm for control but since its leds are restricted in t1 is not viable

.398 4 Bazaar of Baghdad
.684 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
.678 3 Golgari Thug
.680 4 Stinkweed Imp
.681 4 Narcomoeba
.705 4 Bridge From Below
.700 4 Dread Return*
.666 4 Cabal Therapy
.675 3 Flame-Kin Zealot
.691 4 Ichorid
.120 2 Iona, Shield of Emeria
.682 3 Unmask
.722 4 Gemstone Mine
.830 4 Breakthrough
.403 4 City of Brass
.1040 1 Woodfall Primus
.1440 4 Careful Study

[HornofAmmon]

Thanks t0xica, I'm going to try out your deck also. I'm just testing these against random decks in gauntlets, not going through challenges, just to see what dredge is all about. Newb question, what is LED?

[Wronskian]

LED = Lion's Eye Diamond

[t0xica]

what he said

[juzamjedi]

Adding a little mana to the vintage version is OK. That version of the deck is all about Bazaar of Baghdad and Crop Rotation is really useful. The version I use for the super mulligan challenge includes 4x Crop Rotation, 4x Breeding Pool 4x Tropical Island and 4x Breakthrough to give me more ways to get going.